Curiosity. Once I was able to ignore the general smugness of Mac users, I wanted to test drive the OS. I bought a 12" PB from craigslist and really enjoyed it. From there, I started using both Mac and PC, and eventually switched exclusively to Mac. The main selling points for me were:

at first it was curiousity. then it became stability/ease of use. one of my favourite things at first was that there was NO INSTALLATION WIZARD. drag and drop to install/delete apps? sign me up. then it became the fact that i never needed to run some funny registry cleaner spyware remover yadayadayada.

in the end i would say it takes me less effort to use and be more satisfied with the experience. i still deal with windows (the rest of my family use windows so i have to take care of them) but i am a mac

What made me switch years ago was the battery life. I was taking a college course and during the time in class the only ones that had to plug in were the PC users (all 4 of us) and the 12 Mac users never had to plug in. We used the same programs, but the Mac version was just nicer formatted and more stable than the PC version. I switched midway through the course. It was a course on Artificial Intelligence, so we used heavy CPU usage programs with lots of number crunching and modeling and seemed to task the Mac less (although I was using a dog of an AMD mobile processor, Intel would have been better in the PC as well).

I habe a background in Unix and like the similarities between it and OS X (although I like Windows as well, I am not anti-Windows).

I had an iMac G5 and loved it. After much use, it died to capacitor (stuck in garage now, no idea how to deal with that on my own!) and bought a PC due to economic reasons. But now I'm in college and needed a laptop so I got a 15" MBP. I never really 'switched', I always preferred Mac. Why? Well, mainly because of the OS's seamless integration with the hardware (no hardware issues), good customer support (even if it's iPod wise, I had mine replaced by a new one even when it was out of warranty. Same company though), runs fast and without issues, and so on.

These aren't really 'deal killers' for anyone to switch to a Mac, but I must point out that, in a laptop, I love the backlit keyboard and GLASS multigesture trackpad.

Oh, and expose. I need not say more. There should be a law that all computers have expose.

I had used various Macs in the early to mid 90s for MIDI sequencing and then later on in the decade as the host system for a ProTools IIIPCI system. I actually strayed and bought one of the last Power Tower Pro machines before Apple shut them down, because it had more PCI slots. I ended up getting a Magma external PCI chassis because at the largest my system was it had 3 Disk I/O and I think 4 DSP Farms.

Anyway, I had all through that used PC for everything else. I considered myself a PC guy that used Macs for audio.

Fast forward to 2008. I was looking for a new personal laptop and discovered that the only ones that met my hardware criteria in both specs and build were Apples. I figured "well, I'll just run windows anyway".

I love OSX. I love the Mac laptops I've had and now I'm hooked. If it wasn't for work and video games, I'd never run Windows again.

Regarding the thin feel, it takes a long time to boot and shut down on Windows 7...also, updates, configuration of system preferences - it all just goes quicker on the Mac.

Mac OS is thinner and has less overhead.

Regarding enjoyment of both OS's, there are a lot of things that I like about Windows 7 - the compatibility with everything available on the net, the way I dont have to worry about file permissions, cleaning up icons... the degree to which I can configure things in Control Panel, control resources, etc...

I reboot my Win 7 machines about once per week, so they are really rock stable.

I use my PCs for gaming and medical applications, and the PCs (dollar for dollar and even from an availability perspective) blow Macs out of the water. I have an i7 950 desktop with a GTX 295 video card - and this system is almost two years old. My other laptop is a Sandy Bridge i7 2820 with a GTX 470M and 12GB of RAM... no Mac can touch what that system can do, and I got it for FAR less than most basic Macs cost.

So for me, the Mac 13" is my wonderful and capable portable machine. I really enjoy using it and carrying it around. But it serves a distinctly different purpose than my PCs. (Edit: I use a MBP Base 13" with 8GB of RAM - all it needs is an SSD to make it perfect.)

1. Usability, as Apple likes to call it. Windows is hardware-based, with vendors competing for better specs. With Macs, it's all functionality. If hardware isn't a problem, then why overindulge in something you don't need?
2. Design. Sexy MBP.
3. Battery. Kickass MBP.
4. Program Variety. The main arguement people have against Macs is that there aren't as many programs for Mac than for Windows. They leave out one thing: Macs can run Windows AND Linux. Which means PCs, which can't run Mac OS X without hackintoshing, have less variety in programs than Macs.
5. User interface. I like simplistic, utilitarian glassy design. Snappy, too.
6. Speed. Quad-core 15" can't be beat. Unless, as said by T-pain,

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IT AIN'T HARDCORE UNLESS IT'S HEXACORE! MEGAGIGABYTE SON!

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7. Compatibility. iDevices are integrated seamlessly with Macs, as opposed to PCs which have less integration.
8. Upgrade. I was due for a computer upgrade anyway.
9. Future-proofing. I see people still using PowerBooks, and that kind of longevity is nonexistent in PCs.
10. Specs. Kickass CPU, good screen resolution, decent graphics, etc. I tried configuring similar laptops as closely as possible, but they either ended coming short of my expectations or looking ugly.

1. I had a really crappy Dell laptop that was a high school graduation present. When something inevitably went wrong with the crappy Dell freshman year of college, I spent hours on the phone with tech support. He wanted me to unscrew the bottom and access the RAM or something...I barely knew what RAM was at that point. I had to send the computer to Dell to be serviced and it took 3 weeks to get it back...and anyone who is or has been a college freshman knows how enthusiastic I was about that. Meanwhile my best friend's Mac was problem free...but Macs were for artsy/design types and had some weird operating system I didn't know how to use.

2. Despite the obnoxious anti-virus software I had that had a different popup 3 times per minute, the crappy Dell got a virus. Harddrive totally wiped out, papers needed to be rewritten, disaster. My best friend with her Mac didn't worry about viruses...but Macs were for artsy/design types and had some weird operating system I didn't know how to use.

3. Then sophomore year I joined the college newspaper staff. The newspaper was laid out on a Mac. I was editor of my high school's yearbook two years prior and we laid out the yearbook ON PAPER!!!! IN 2001!!!! because the school was too cheap to buy us a Mac. I fell in love, junked the crappy Dell and have never looked back. Now I have a Macbook (soon to be upgraded to a Macbook Pro), an iPhone, an iPad and an AppleTV...

When I was in college (graduated 5 years ago) no one had a Mac. Now that I'm in grad school, 3 or 4 out of 5 computers I see the undergrads using on campus is a Mac.

Curiosity. Once I was able to ignore the general smugness of Mac users, I wanted to test drive the OS. I bought a 12" PB from craigslist and really enjoyed it. From there, I started using both Mac and PC, and eventually switched exclusively to Mac. The main selling points for me were:

Staff Member

I switched in 2003 due to both curiosity and price. I'd tried Linux before and saw OS X as "like Linux but with commercial apps". When the 2002 iBook came out with a "real" video chip, for cheaper than practically everything else on the market ($999), I decided to give it a go.

The original question doesn't mention the operating system, so I'll say that I switched from a PC running Linux to Mac. My wife and I got iPods with our tax return one year. The iPods worked fine with the music software in Linux, but my wife wanted the real iTunes, which wasn't available for Linux. So we got her a Mac Mini and I continued to use my Linux PC. What I loved about her Mac was that she never had to ask me how to do anything anymore. Mac OS X was intuitive. I started using it too because I got into video editing, and iMovie was much better than anything available for Linux. At some point I realized that there was nothing Mac couldn't do that Linux could do. All the same Open Source software was available for Linux and Mac, such as Firefox and Audacity. But iMovie sealed the deal for me. I still use that old PC, still running (the latest version of) Linux. But it's a server now. My desktop and laptop of choice is Mac.

I just wanted to try a new OS, and I have always loved Apple hardware designs. I still have to use PCs for work, but with parallels and boot camp, I can have everything, and OSX is a pleasure to work with. While not perfect, I can't imagine a better machine for me right now than my new MPB 15".

I have been dissatisfied with Microsoft operating systems since MS-DOS 3.2. Microsoft has never had an original idea. Their answer to the flaws in Windows since Windows 3.0 has been, give us more money and buy the next version.

Mac OSx because Mac laptops are better designed, have better battery life and accesories are nicer

Win 7 - because I prefer Microsoft Office for Win 7 over Office for OSx edt., I also prefer the entire Adobe Master CS collection for Win 7 over OSx and finally because I game a little bit and also like building PC's and pick the best ultimate parts to make a very speedy machine that will run from any MacPro any time

However programs such as Aperture, Coda and Espresse are awesome and designed for OSx, so I like having the best from both worlds

* Native UNIX environment surrounded by an excellent UI - not just onscreen, but the way the multitouch trackpad works.
* No need to constantly manage malware/virus related concerns.
* Ease of use - quick starts and shutdowns, ease of installation and removal of programs.
* Stability and lack of performance degradation. Quite apparent in Windows where a bloated registry becomes apparent in a few months, and a clean reinstall is necessary once in a while.
* Last, the industrial design definitely brings a smile regularly.

More than anything, my Mac gives the impression that much thought and care went into designing this. It doesn't feel like a computer that's merely a sum of it's parts. There are other systems whose parts are better, but this one feels superior to the sum of what it contains, just because it was carefully crafted together - it feels solid, doesn't creak, nothing feels flimsy.

The only other laptop where I felt something nearly on these lines was a Vaio that lasted me five years. The Acers and Toshibas between then and getting my MBP just felt like commodities.

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